The Atlantic Theatre was located in a strip mall anchored by the Atlantic Discount Center, a discount department store and supermarket. The theatre opened in the late spring of 1963 with CALL ME BWANA, a Bob Hope vehicle produced by Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, in a wide first run. That summer they continued with the policy of booking first run movies on multiple runs.

The first move that I actually saw there was DR. NO, also produced by Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and also in a wide first run. Of course, DR. NO introduced Sean Connery as James Bond and it was abundantly clear that he was a genuine movie star. This movie was released in the era when John Kennedy was President; the space race was on; and the Cuban Missile Crisis was still a comparatively recent memory. At that time, DR. NO was ideal Saturday afternoon entertainment for a teenage boy.

The Atlantic Theatre was built at a time when the racial makeup of the nearby Kirkwood neighborhood was changing. Those were the bad old days of segregation, block busting, and panic selling. In that economic climate there was no real chance for the theater to survive. Frankly, it seemed strange at the time that the theatre opened in that area at all.

The last time that I was aware of the Atlantic Theatre being in business was in 1967. By that time it had become a second run grind house for the areaâ€™s predominantly black audience. After that I lost track of it. However, the building did survive as a disco and later as a storage facility.

In 1983, I had the occasion to stop by the theater again. Oddly enough, the door was open and I was able to go inside and take a look. What struck me about it was that the screen was still intact. The matting had been removed and you could see that the screen was wall to wall.

That experience made me recall seeing Ray Harryhausenâ€™s JASON & THE ARGONAUTS twenty years earlier. Fellow film buffs from College Park came over to the eastside to join me to see the movie on the Atlantic Theatreâ€™s large screen. For us it was the right movie at the right time.